. . . a funny old life with multiple sclerosis

What Was I Saying Again?

‘It’s there, that watchermacallit on the thingiemabob. Next to the dooby-doo.’

This was me yesterday, explaining to The Teenager where an important form he needed for school was.

MS has been having lots of fun with my brain and it’s only getting worse (it’s got absolutely nothing to do with turning 40 of course). I just can’t seem to remember the most simple words.

I’ll pause mid-sentence, sifting through years of education in my mind before finally landing on the word I’m looking for, so happy to have found it that I’ll inappropriately yell out ‘banana! I meant, banana!’. Or some other word that completely escaped me five minutes earlier.

I also make up new words. Like last week when my mum asked me what I had planned that morning. ‘Oh, it’s flab day’, I replied. She sighed and said, ‘oh sweetheart, I know you’re unhappy with your weight, but think positively. Have you tried chick peas?’ I had to tell her that I was indeed unhappy with my weight, but I was actually going for my flu jab.

In my glory days, I prided myself on being able to converse in three languages (four if you count Glasgwegian). Now, I can barely get by with one. Plus, I also have the ignominy of repeating myself, thanks to bizarre short term memory loss. I am in danger of turning into the dinner party guest from hell, the one that’s invited along for a bit of comic relief.

I have visions of Christmas Day twenty years from now, with The Teenager taking his children to one side and gently reminding them to be patient with Granny Stumbling and not to laugh when she can’t remember the punchlines to jokes, or when she asks them for the umpteenth time how they’re doing in school. Just re-fill her sherry glass and hand her a copy of People’s Friend. And under no circumstances are you to bring out Pictionary or Scrabble.

For now, although socially dire, I manage as best I can. In shops, when I can’t remember what I went in for, I’ll look at my watch and dash off, pretending I’m late for some appointment. In restaurants, I’ll point to the menu, as if my mind is on higher things than ordering lunch. And when I’m out with friends, I’ll….hang on, what was I saying again?

I can’t believe YOU have a dooby-doo too! What you describe, if I remember your post correctly, is happening to me all too frequently these days. I’m sure some of it’s [shudder] age, but the rest I blame on the MS. In *my* (quite brief) glory days, I used to love to make up words like “flab” for flu jab. Now I do it unwittingly, although I pretend as if I did it on purpose — if it makes sense, that is. That (making sense) is happening all too INfrequently, lol.

Yup! Dooby-doo is a very handy word, standing in for many things from school forms to bananas, lol.
I very rarely make sense these days. I think I am definitely turning in to the batty one in my family. Meh.
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